Omar Barghouti

The PNIF — the first signatory listed on the 2005 BDS call — is a coalition of organizations established by terrorists Marwan Barghouti and Yasser Arafat in 2000-2001, at the beginning of the second intifada, to coordinate terror attacks against Israel by Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) groups and Hamas.

The coalition also includes terrorist organizations such the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) and Palestinians Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

Barghouti’s father was [00:00:28] a PLO founder in 1964. In a February 2017 interview with BDS in Norway, Barghouti stated [00:00:36] that “The PLO was very much part of our family… it was very much part of our upbringing.”

Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories

On February 24, 2015, speaking at Portland State University (Portland), Barghouti claimed [00:24:38] “The U.S. and Israel are benefiting a lot from this ISIS phenomenon… well they created Taliban, they created Al-qaeda… so why not ISIS? ...We don’t have conclusive evidence.”

The talk was sponsored by Portland’s SJP chapter, Students United for Palestinian Equal Rights (SUPER).

On January 11, 2014, during a talk at Wayne State University, Barghouti claimed [00:07:40] “Israel has a hold on Congress, has enormous influence on Congress, not just because the Zionist Jewish lobby or Zionist Christian fundamentalist lobbies are doing a tremendous job. 

They are… they know how to bully, how to intimidate… ‘Congress is bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.’”

Opposing Jewish Self-Determination

During his 2014 talk at UCLA, Barghouti reportedly denied that the Jewish people have a right to self-determination or any collective rights.

In a talk he gave in Norway, organized by the “Networkers South-North” group and posted on Vimeo on September 23, 2013, Barghouti referred to [00:07:16] “self-determination for Jewish settlers in Palestine, which I categorically oppose. Never in history was a colonizing community ever allowed self-determination… colonizers are not entitled to self-determination.”

Calling for Israel’s Destruction as the Jewish State

Barghouti endorses the one-state solution, which he says [00:02:17] can only come about by the “de-zionization” of Israel as the Jewish state.

At his 2013 “Networkers South-North” talk in Norway, Barghouti said [00:05:32] “A Jewish state in Palestine, in any shape or form, cannot but contravene the basic rights of the land’s indigenous Palestinian population and perpetuate a system of racial discrimination that ought to be opposed categorically.”

He continued [00:05:53]: “Definitely, most definitely we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No Palestinian, rational Palestinian, not a sell-out Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”

In a February 24, 2010 interview, Barghouti asked rhetorically [00:01:14] “If the occupation ends, let’s say, would that end your call for BDS? No it wouldn’t.” Regarding the right of return, he said [00:04:32] “we cannot negotiate [it] away... this is something that we cannot compromise on.”

On May 31, 2009, in an interview on the Electronic Intifada site, Barghouti stated that “...a return for refugees would end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. The right of return is a basic right that cannot be given away; it’s inalienable.” In 2016, Barghouti said [00:00:40] that “the need for the right of return of the refugees” was the “most important” of BDS three stated goals.

In 2007, Barghouti was one of the authors of the “One State Declaration” that called for “The implementation of the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees in accordance with UN Resolution 194.” By 2003, Barghouti, had affirmed that the one-state solution meant “a unitary state, where, by definition, Jews will be a minority.”

In a January 6, 2004 op-ed for Electronic Intifada, Barghouti wrote that “We are witnessing the rapid demise of Zionism, and nothing can be done to save it, for Zionism is intent on killing itself. I, for one, support euthanasia.”

The “right of return” is a Palestinian demand discredited as a means to eliminate Israel. International law mandates no absolute right of return and UN Resolution 194, which defined principles for “returning Palestine refugees to their homes,” was unanimously rejected by Arab nations following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.  

Demonizing Israel

Barghouti has repeatedly accused Israel of genocide and ethnic cleansing. He has claimed that “Palestinian communities… have been recently subjected to some of the worst, ongoing Israeli campaigns of gradual ethnic cleansing intended to Judaize their space.”

He has also claimed that Zionism is “a patently racist ideology that has served to enable and justify the ethnic cleansing of most of the indigenous people of Palestine” and has accused Israel of “indiscriminate killings (including of children)” and of the “deliberate shooting of Palestinian children during this [the second] intifada.”

In a July 8, 2014 interview, Barghouti opposed an inter-faith educational program, the Muslim Leadership Initiative (MLI), referring to it as “inter-fail.”

He said that the program aims to “brainwash” Muslims “through trying to whitewash Israeli apartheid, through whitewashing Zionism, making Zionism look better, and hiding its racist character that seeks a Jewish exclusionary, a Jewish ethnocratic state that excludes non-Jews from equal rights.”

He continued: “That’s what Zionism is… We’re living under Zionism in Palestine, we’re living under apartheid and occupation, we don’t need any brainwashed Muslim in the United States or elsewhere to tell us: oh, Zionism is misunderstood. You’ve got to be more tolerant of Zionism. Thank you very much, we’re living Zionism, and we don’t want it.”

In Barghouti’s January 2014 UCLA talk, he promoted [00:24:38] the claim that “Israeli soldiers shoot Palestinian children ‘for sport’.” He also reportedly described Israel’s self-defense measures as “routine terrorism.”

At the 2011 Socialism conference in Chicago, Barghouti outlined his strategy of attack on Israeli academia and went on to demonize Israeli inventions and technology, by saying [00:37:44]: “Do you want me to tell you what Germany had invented before the Nazis?”

In 2010, Barghouti reportedly stated that in Gaza “There are no death camps. Israel is too sophisticated for that. Israel is a more evolved war criminal. It does things slower.”

In a 2010 interview Barghouti claimed [00:13:00] that Israel “is the most violent entity that exists in this entire region.”

In a speech he gave on December 4, 2009, Barghouti compared Israel to Nazi Germany, saying [00:06:44]: “Must we see gas chambers in order for people to react? ...Germany did not start with gas chambers, they started with racist laws… and we are seeing this process in Gaza and in the occupied territories and even inside Israel.”

In his May 31, 2009 interview on Electronic Intifada, Barghouti accused Israel of “legalized and institutionalized racism,” claiming “that’s what makes it apartheid.”

He went on to say that “the Israeli occupation and denial of refugee rights is even much worse than anything South Africa had… they never had this level of outright violence and massacres. Of course, there was Sharpeville, so many massacres in Soweto, and so on, but it all pales in comparison to what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians.”

On December 1, 2004, in an op-ed for Electronic Intifada, Barghouti wrote “Many of the methods of collective and individual ‘punishment’ meted out to Palestinian civilians at the hands of young, racist, often sadistic and ever impervious Israeli soldiers... are reminiscent of common Nazi practices against the Jews.”